Hey guys,

So this week I thought I’d take a look back on the artwork of the comic and talk about the changes I’ve made since it began.  Mike and I were recently discussing how Lead Paint is relatively close to its one-year anniversary, ever since we re-launched some time in 2009. As some of you may know, we originally started back in 2007 or 2008, but we ended up taking a nearly year-long hiatus to reevaluate what we were doing and see what we could do to suck less. As a result, you’ll notice a pretty big shift in art between this strip and this one.

During this hiatus, my personal goal as the artist was to just make the art look not not-so-shitty.  I focused my energy on redesigning Colin and Avery, so that their look would basically dictate the style for the rest of the comic. After a few weeks  of struggling I came up with designs that I thought were okay, but I wasn’t entirely thrilled with them. I was stuck for a while after that, until I suddenly came up with these designs:

This is obviously the look that stuck, although the style continues to evolve as I draw more and more. One of the things that began to bother me after I overhauled the designs was Colin’s eyes, which were just too simple and not expressive enough for a main character of the comic. So I made a slight adjustment, and here’s a very rough sketch of what they look like now:

Not a huge change, but his eyes are much more expressive and you can actually see what direction he’s looking in.

Just for fun, here’s a visual timeline of Colin and Avery over the past couple of years (the last shots of Colin and Avery are a sneak peek at next Sunday’s comic):

(man, Avery is angry like all the time.)

Looking back at a lot of those older strips can sometimes be embarrassing and cringe-inducing, but on the other hand it’s nice to see the progression. It’ll be interesting to see what the comic looks like 5 years from now, especially since Mike and I have tons of ideas for both the short-term and long-term future. Hope you guys stick around!

-Dana

MUSIC TIME:

• “A Mighty Sparrow” –Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. The first song to Ted Leo’s new album “Brutalist Bricks.” Someone was kind enough to send me an advance copy of the album after reading my last blog post (Thanks again Todd, if you’re reading this), so it’s basically all I’ve been listening to since then.  I think it’s easily his best album yet.
• “Written in Reverse” –Spoon. From the new Spoon album, which I had been listening to prior to getting the new Ted Leo.  Nothing too different from what they had done previously, but I really like their minimalistic sound and this album’s rougher production quality.
• “Ex-Girl Collection” –The Wrens. The Wrens are notorious for taking an insanely long time to release albums. It’s been almost 8 years since they released “The Meadowlands,” and as far as I know they’re still actively working towards putting out another album. I’m sure they’re fully aware of how ridiculous this is, since the tagline on their website is “Keeping folks waiting since 1989.”